Work meetings clashing with school pick-up are making me anxious

[LiquoriceAllsorts2]

I have received several meetings that clash with the time that I need to collect my kids. Where possible I have tried to make it work and have my husband collect but there is a couple that I can’t make work due to him being away. I will tell work I can’t make it and will need to leave early but I feel so anxious that it will reflect badly on me and hate that I have been put in this position.

feels that however hard I work, sometimes it just can’t be enough.

dont know what I am looking for really, just want to rant and get my frustrations out. I hate that this needs to be an issue.

This! You/H should make arrangements for your kids pickups - I employed a childminder and wouldn’t have dreamt of saying I’d got other stuff to do in my working day.
Jeez ….. I and other women sweated blood to be treated equally to men in the late 70s and 80s (probably 90s and 2000 too) . God I feel old!

The issue is that there seems to be no policy, just an expectation that all staff are able to attend a 6pm meeting, and to date no one has questioned it. It sounds a tense working environment.

There are plenty of actual cases if you wanted to search for them.
But examples can be an employer expecting employees to work any hours they set without notice - very difficult to accommodate if you have caring responsibilities/childcare with set hours.

Or an employer arbitrarily setting work hours that make accessing childcare difficult (which is what is essentially happening here).

No helpful advice OP, but just solidarity. Being a working parent is fucking hard, feel like you spend a fortune in childcare to work longer hours but rarely feel the financial benefit of it and always feel like you're letting someone down!

It sounds like you’re juggling a lot between home life and work op. I don’t mean to sound harsh when I say this - but you’re either on work time or you’re not. If your work have flexible working - brilliant! Get a flexible working pattern sorted with your line manager so you can do the pick up stress free and are protected from any queries/ meeting requests at that time. If your work don’t offer this and you should be working during those hours then you probably shouldn’t be doing school pick up during work time (regardless of whether you make up the hours later on). If your employer expects you to work during core hours then you should be working - you’re putting yourself at risk of performance conversations/ disciplinary action. I haven’t read the full thread so I might have missed info which makes my comment irrelevant- but just highlighting how it works at my workplace.

Honestly say "you may need me there and that is no problem however if my attendance is required these meetings myst occur between 10am and 4pm. If there is a specific reason why others cannot attend at this time then this needs to be considered company wide, with various flexible working patterns available then surely meetings should be scheduled at a time when all staff are available"

That sounds a crazy job situation, that you're expected to be 100% flexible at all hours of every day! If that's really the case then it's hard to know what to suggest.

I think sometimes though, people do gain more respect by putting a boundary in and not over-apologising for it - as long as they're generally hard working and helpful and not taking the piss.

I think I'd be tempted to just start making it clear you're not available between 5 and 6 pm - put it in your calendar, in your email signature and decline meetings at that time. If anyone asks - "Sorry I'm not available 5-6pm".

Surely, surely you can't be the only one with kids at nursery and after school club with a 6pm finish?

When you don’t have fixed times, the company normally has core hours. Have you checked that? For example, our core hours are 10 an to 4pm. You have to be available at these times, but around that start/finish times are flexible. So you can refuse meetings etc after/before these times and people are very understanding. The core times are based on childcare/care responsibilities

Reading the full thread would have definitely helped …

I don’t have small children to collect but I do have a life and if any colleague could routinely put in in-person meetings until 6pm I’d want to know the policy so I could decide whether that was the workplace for me. I travel 2.5 hours to get to the office, as do many of my colleagues. Fortunately it’s not the 80s any more and we don’t think dinner is for wimps!

Women today still are with the added pressure of us now being expected to be equal to men

5-6pm meetings aren't a reasonable expectation, a lot of people will have childcare commitments after 5pm, nurseries generally close at 6pm. If you start at 8am you can leave at 5pm having done your eight hours. I would block my calendar out after five to say unavailable and decline any post 5pm
meetings. Let them come to you if they have a problem with that. But I don't think they have much of a leg to stand on if you aren't contracted to work after 5pm and you've already completed your hours that day.

Decline the meeting request and say "sending apologies for this one as I have a hard stop at 5pm that day, but I can do [insert another day]." Shows willing.

Your DH really needs to do pick up on at least two days though, so you can be available for some later meetings. I'm guessing nobody puts the late meetings on a Friday, so that just leaves two days you need to finish by 5pm, perhaps one of those you can WFH too. Put a block on your calendar for 5pm pick up days.

If it's really important to you I'd be looking for a more flexible, family friendly workplace. Not everywhere is like this.

I think you're missing the point a bit. Being treated equally to men is not the end game of feminism, even in the 70s and 80s.

“I paid a childminder and did everything work asked of me, so everyone else should too” is not some kind of progressive badge of honour either. We should be able to question whether something is actually reasonable, rather than automatically accepting that because work says so. Wanting a bit of flexibility around caring responsibilities isn’t asking for special treatment, it's asking for a workplace model that isn't built around a patriarchal model and ignores the reality of people's lives.

Being treated equally to men is not the end game of feminism, even in the 70s and 80s

Agree. Especially not when the world is still set up in a way that assumes working people have someone else taking care of home and kids.

We need men to start saying actually I have the school run. Not women to pretend they don’t.

I’m not missing any point, please don’t patronise me.
You’re right about things being more flexible now for men and women that is real progress….. but if you wanted your career to progress in the 70s/80s AND get promoted over men the last thing you could do was to say I’m off at 3.30 to pick the kids up.
It isn’t a badge of honour it was life back then - equally most men wouldn’t have said it either. It’s probably difficult to imagine if you didn’t live through it.
I’m really happy things have changed for the better but my experience was so different and I believe many women back then paved the way for improvements in attitudes to women - don’t dismiss us so easily.

She's not asking to leave at 3:30 though, not holding meetings after 5pm is not an unreasonable expectation.
I'm not denying or minimising your experience, but just because that's how things were for you doesn't mean everyone else should live like that now, things have moved on in most workplaces and I'm grateful for it.

But she’s not leaving work at 3.30 though.

I agree things have really changed for the better - but back then progressing a career was very different for women.
I was just reminiscing but I do believe we changed mens attitudes to women in the workplace - I even had a briefcase fgs!! 🤣

She isn’t off at 3.30
the OP uses wraparound care
in my professional tech role it is considered perfectly acceptable for MEN to do the school run. Then log back on with kids in the background

However OP isn’t doing this

I repeat it’s good things have changed for the better - I would hate young women today to experience what working life was like in the 80s - although generally the 80s were pretty wonderful, working life was very different and difficult, especially for women.
Not being in a meeting at 5pm would have been frowned upon in many professions. I’ll say it again it’s good (indeed very good) that things have changed.
Although if I was still working now and my boss said there’s a meeting at 5pm I’d bust a gut to be there especially if she or he was the one hopefully promoting me in the future.
However I accept that bosses may think differently now - I just have no experience of bosses these days!

Try and befriend whoever is setting up the meetings. I find if it's an EA and I speak to her off the record, and tell her to please avoid meetings after 5 as need to do pickup, then they often do.
Or, say you can't make it as you have another meeting. Ironically, that sometimes works better than the real reason.
Or, I would sometimes pre-empt things by saying I would be the one setting up the meeting, or I would do it - so i had the choice of the time.
I have to say it's easier now I am more senior as things move around me, and it's also easier for me to say I am leaving to pick up the children. If you are senior it's called leading by example. If you are junior it's seen as being unreliable/not all in, sadly.

I have contracted weekly hours, but these hours can be worked any time between 7am and 7pm Mon - Fri, so not set hours.

I don't think what the OP has said doesn't make sense.

The difference is "can".
If you have to collect children by 6pm are you able to do so w/o question? It seems OP needs to be available for a very long window each day.

I agree with you, I would not be able to do just any time between those hours.

I was replying to a PP who said the OP's post didn't make sense because she should 'Have a clear understanding of what your scheduled working hours are e.g. 9 - 5 with a 30 minute break (for example)'

I was just pointing out that the OP wasn't not making sense simply because she didn't have set hours.